I think that most of us on this board, have already planned for falling back on our own resources, as far as power goes. And if we, in the US are given just a little bit of time, there are so many new types of power generation coming online, that, soon, it will only be a blip.

Ken- I'm sure that 'when the lights go out' is a metaphor in this context, and that the video refers to the chaos and armed conflict that will accompany a collapse of our infrastructure. For the record, I'm not a combat veteran and videos like this scare the hell out of me for a variety of reasons.

This goes to what I was saying on another thread...that nobody can survive alone. I'm fortunate that I have neighbors who are good people and do have combat skills as ex-cops/military. We've begun to seriously discuss how to defend our homes.

I think that most of us on this board, have already planned for falling back on our own resources, as far as power goes. And if we, in the US are given just a little bit of time, there are so many new types of power generation coming online, that, soon, it will only be a blip.

Yes, I don't think he means the lights go out literally. My thought is it's another way of saying, when the balloon goes up, or when it all goes to heck (LL).

Truly, if it does get as bad as he talks about, chances are I'm not going to see the end of it. Be that as it may, hopefully I'll make a good accounting of myself and go to my maker with my boots on. So be it, I was never planning to live forever anyway.

I think he's talking about a state of nature SHTF anarchy, which is only going to happen in a certain set of relatively limited scenarios - nationwide EMP or Carrington Event, comet/asterioid strike, nuclear war, The Stand-type pandemic or biowar attack. And if one of these occcurs, the "Killer Karavans" of murderous thugs are not going to be as numerous as he posits - most of them are stupid, and most of them will die from one thing or another.

Still, some of the advice strikes me as useful: Don't put a lot of money into glitz and glitter and Captain Commando Crap, just get yourself a good rifle with a good scope, a good, dependable handgun, maybe a good, dependable shotgun, lots and lots of ammo, and practice, practice, practice.

I don't think many will argue about the superiority of a rifle over a pistol in most combat situations, nor would they argue that pistols don't have their uses as well.

I think what he's really inveighing against is the Mall Ninja approach to prepping, but around here, I think he's mostly preaching to the choir.

You know what I think is the biggest "if" for most preppers when it comes to combat scenarios? The most basic question of all - if you've never pointed a gun at somebody and pulled the trigger, will you be able to do so when the time comes? And you will never know the answer - not for sure - until you find yourself in that situation....

So much depends on where you are, eh? If you're in the city, fugetaboutit. I joke with my willfully-ignorant liberal nephew that he'll 'never get out of Brooklyn alive'. Well...he thinks it's a joke anyway.

There are several stages in the breakdown of society and the first real violence will begin when the city-dwellers realize that their EBT cards are worthless and the supermarket shelves aren't being restocked.

Still, some of the advice strikes me as useful: Don't put a lot of money into glitz and glitter and Captain Commando Crap, just get yourself a good rifle with a good scope, a good, dependable handgun, maybe a good, dependable shotgun, lots and lots of ammo, and practice, practice, practice.

Heh. Some might reverse that every so slightly.

Quote from: Bill Quick

...You know what I think is the biggest "if" for most preppers when it comes to combat scenarios? The most basic question of all - if you've never pointed a gun at somebody and pulled the trigger, will you be able to do so when the time comes? And you will never know the answer - not for sure - until you find yourself in that situation....

Agreed, and if I can make a suggestion...

A deer is not a man, obviously, but many a wannabe woodsman has gone to pieces when they have the opportunity to shoot a deer. If one has never pulled a trigger when aiming at a mammal (preferably large-ish mammal), I'd recommend seeking out an opportunity to do just that.

So much depends on where you are, eh? If you're in the city, fugetaboutit. I joke with my willfully-ignorant liberal nephew that he'll 'never get out of Brooklyn alive'. Well...he thinks it's a joke anyway.

There are several stages in the breakdown of society and the first real violence will begin when the city-dwellers realize that their EBT cards are worthless and the supermarket shelves aren't being restocked.

Indeed. I never have been much of one for the big city. I'm even less inclined to enjoy being in one now. I never have understood some people's attraction.

Surely if things get ugly the bigger cities will be a poor place to be. If I am lucky the horde will be thinned considerably before they work their way out to this little corner of the world. Certainly the challenges will be plenty without the added burden of clueless liberals from the city.

And, as for this: "Don't put a lot of money into glitz and glitter and Captain Commando Crap". I have spent most of my life living by the motto; Be careful to invest your money and effort in what you really need, not what you merely want. I expect most of the folks here would agree with this conservative approach to life in general and to prepping in particular.

As for the rest, it's mostly a matter of point of view on the preps. I'm thinking Bill is right, and that most of the people here are going to be prepared. ( to be honest, a lot of the people here have some passing familiarity with a military viewpoint, which includes the possibilities of things going REALLY violently bad. )

Unless we have something like a Carrington Event, we won't lose communications and the amount of prep will mostly be a regional one.

Video in the first post of this thread, Ken, ass-you-me'ing you haven't already seen it.

I think we all need to keep in mind that the most likely emergency is not the direst threat; here in western Washington, we all fret over volcano, earthquake, or tsunami, but flooding and winter storms are almost annual events leading to declarations of disaster. Doesn't mean I shouldn't prep for an CME/EMP attack or a severe pandemic, but the most cost-effective, immediate preps someone in my neighborhood can make is warm, water-proof clothes, candles and/or flashlights, and a generator. (If a tsunami hits my neighborhood you can kiss Amazon, Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks--and subsidiary Seattle's Best Coffee and rival Tullys--good bye. Also, BTW, PACCAR, AKA Peterbilt and Kenworth, as well as Nintendo USA. So, contra the immortal words of George Carlin, I don't sweat the big stuff...)

Drang, that's why I posted that i was using Tapatalk, I had to switch over to my computer, before I could even see that the video was even there.....

The guy that made the video makes some common errors, he assumed that a majority of preppers were like those he ran across. And Drang, You are right, a greater majority of Preppers are going to prep for those problems THEY see coming down the pike. It's expensive to be prepared for everything. Those of us who had been in the military have a bit more experience with a greater variety of disasters, than most people, but I think that those of us that read (or even write) certain classes of literature can imagine bigger and better problems to prep for.

Short answer; yes, a lot of preppers are going to die if a big shtf event occurs. Maybe 50 percent-ish. Sounds bad doesn't it? Not really.Consider that IMO over 90 percent-ish of non-preppers are going to die in that same event.

50% or more chance of life versus 10% or less chance of life. I know what side I choose, so don't be discouraged by videos like this.

Not to hijack the thread, but I've found prepping is about more than just SHTF planning. It also has a positive effect on how you look at life, how you deal with people, how you plan your own physical and non-physical resources, how you look at the role of government in your life, etc etc etc....Prepping is a good thing in and of itself, as long as you don't become a Cap'n Commando Clown or a near-suicidal Gloomy Gus.

Amen! I'm not as prepared as I should be or want to be, but better than many people I know. And wanting to be safe is one of the reasons we live here & not in a city or even a small town. (Altho my being sort of agoraphobic is the main reason.) One of the good points of where we are is that we're not apt to be found. And if we are, this area is very defensible. No roads east or west, a paranoid prepper to the north, & a single road to the south that's easy to block - I know that because good ole Mom Nature has done it a few times.

It really feels good to know one's family will survive not being able to get into town for some months. Bored to death with the food by then, but we would at least be eating.

I'm another one who hasn't been able to look at the video yet. I need to take my laptop into town to be able to see videos.

Before I post, let it be known, that I do not know this man...and am not endorsing anything, any idea or anyone....I'm just making a statement...very important for me to state that...

I don't believe, When he refers to the "lights going out", he is referring to literal power outage or an upcoming natural disaster or an economical disaster...he is using the term as a metaphor. He is meaning when the America as we have known it, ceases to be...in other words When America's lights go out.

There is a growing contingent of persons that believe when the second amendment is abolished, it will create a civil war in our country. There is also a belief, that foreign troops, under the guise of the United Nations, will be the main individuals that will battle against the citizens of the United States that rise up to defend their right to gun ownership.There is a growing murmur, that we are about to see another "1776"In this type of scenario, he is correct in what he is portraying.

That being said, individuals are posting videos concerning the above mentioned thoughts. The videos are veiled in language, because certain words will catch the eye of web bots....and those individuals, who get carried away in their language could be labeled with the "T" word and could find themselves in trouble.

Re watch the video and I believe you will now get the drift of what he is saying...

Now consider this....as sincere as the man may seem, there is also the possibility that this video is being purposely put out there to see how folks respond to it...

Just remember this...This internet is more "public" than you can imagine...

Again, I am not endorsing any movement, person, or idea....nor am I involved in any movement....I'm just saying that folks need to be very wise and very carefull.

Like others have said of course lots of folks will die if any of these scenarios begin to unfold, but folks who have taken some steps to prepare will have greatly increased their odds of survival. I live in NJ and work in Manhattan. I am most likely totally boned in the first few hours/days of such a situation; I have no illusions about that.

But if by the grace of god I am able to survive the initial period what I've done based on knowledge here has given me and my loved ones a better chance to survive after that, and that works for me.

The scenario presented is a good bit too stark for a number of reasons. I do not think the kind of "lights go out" catastrophe lasts long in much of the US for a number of reasons:

1. The bad guys won't be supported as well as the good guys. While the bad guys in Iraq and Afghanistan would go out and shoot at or bomb our troops for a few hundred dollars, people here won't be that dumb for that little. Even if our enemies try to subsidize our destruction, going against a bunch of folks with natural gas wells is just a waste of money. The folks with gas wells want to sell product, and wastelands don't buy many therms,

2. Despite the best efforts of a lot of evil, small minded folks, the US is not the Middle East and doesn't suffer from those cultural limitations. I've worked in Iraqi Kurdistan amongst the people. The Kurds had some limitations, but were confident and capable of getting things done. The cultural limitations of the Arab mind were profound by comparison, and are far worse than all but the worst of university faculty lounges here. The kinds of stupid that keep the Middle East hell aren't native here and those roots are not deep.

3. Experiences in Germany and Japan show that very large portions of a population can die without civilization crumbling. The denizens of the university faculty lounges, housing projects, and other artificially sustained pockets of idiocy are going to take a serious hit, but those who choose to get un-stuck from stupid will aggregate civil society faster than you think.

4. Nobody has the logistical ability to mount a serious campaign on US soil. The Chinese could theoretically deliver the troops, but doing so would lay their country bare to revolution. Also, the Chinese haven't mounted a meaningful campaign in living memory with any success. Putting this into perspective, in the last two months US citizens have bought enough firearms to arm both the Chinese and Indian military's. Mexican cartels might be able to hold some dirt for a while, but their doing so will result in their extinction.

5. Absent complicity with idiocy or organized military occupation, the lights don't stay off very long in the US. Currently we are are being complicit with a survivable amount of idiocy, but not a sustainable amount of political idiocy. Also, that idiocy is not native to our culture and is becoming more transparently idiotic.

I still strongly support prepper efforts and keep a lot of material ready for emergency, but most of the land area of the US will return to functioning fairly quickly. The kinds of combat described in the video will likely occur, but not for very long and not in many places. I have high hopes that the death toll will be well under fifty million, and almost exclusively centered on the stupidest states in the union. Damned shame about all the museums, though.

I can think of at least three scenarios that take down the US power grid more or less permanently: EMP, Carrington Event, and viral attacks.

The fact remains that if you fry the big transformers, there are no replacements available in time to do any good.

I'm not so sure that all things are equal. I was passing by a parts yard (new temp one just up the road) and I was asking about all the transformers the were being putting out. They said they were staging some transformers for the bad weather that will come, in a few months. They said that a lot of utilities in the Midwest do so because of the commonality of lighting strikes during certain times of the year. So it might be, enough spares, in certain areas, depending on the time of year.

I can think of at least three scenarios that take down the US power grid more or less permanently: EMP, Carrington Event, and viral attacks.The fact remains that if you fry the big transformers, there are no replacements available in time to do any good.

I live in the same county as Bonneville dam and while I can easily see the grapevine transformer lost taking out LA, there is a lot of excess capacity in the switching here. Killing offline transformers is a much bigger pull, and with the aluminum industry no longer drawing on the infrastructure, there are a lot of large offline transformers around here. Since the rate structure subsidizes excess capacity in this region, killing power here may involve putting a stake through it's heart, cutting off it's head, stuffing it's mouth with salt, and burying it at the crossroads at high noon.

The Northwest is geared to intermittently power much of California for market reasons when there is a lot of water in the rivers. That doesn't apply to urban California but around here we have a much sturdier grid. A Carrington event or EMP would have to occur at almost the exact right time when California was in the middle of a heat wave in early June in order to catch all our transformers online. Even then, the steel plant, chip fab, and engineered metals (Esco) operations would have undamaged giant transformers available for local use. With the urgent need for transformers, there would likely be a very nice market that would reward re-engineering local production into that field.

As for virus attack, catastrophic power grid failure is an obvious event. You aren't going to take out all the HAM radio operators, so unless the same virus goes around strangling power company troubleshooters in their beds at night, informed workarounds will take place. It won't be as efficient or as extensive a grid as once existed, but lights would be on around here.

Frankly, I'm a lot more worried about a really severe ice storm taking down our grid here than your alternatives.

I know you are. That's why you'll be as shocked as everybody else if it actually occurs. None of your remedies, by the way, will work. Without power, there isn't power to move power. You don't just plug a power cord into a dam's generator.

Ken: There is a lot of blithe handwaving about a major, nation-wide grid down scenario. Here. Read what the DOE has to say about losing big transformers:

The Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability has released the "Large Power Transformers and the U.S. Electric Grid" report, an assessment of the procurement and supply environment of large power transformers (LPTs). The report examines the characteristics and procurement of LPTs, including key raw materials and transportation; historical trends and future demands; global and domestic LPT suppliers; and potential issues in the global sourcing of LPTs.
LPTs have long been a major concern for the U.S. electric power sector. Key industry sources — including the Energy Sector Specific Plan, the National Infrastructure Advisory Council's A Framework for Establishing Critical Infrastructure Resilience Goals and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation's Critical Infrastructure Strategic Roadmap -- have identified the limited availability of spare LPTs as a potential issue for critical infrastructure resilience in the United States.

There is a lot of good information to be found in the link below, on this and many other subjects. Please note: This link is to page two of the article and discussion. You will need to page back to read it from the start.

Interesting.....even though the information is somewhat limited, I can see that there are a few facilities near enough to power dams, etc. that North America could bootstrap the manufacturing of the big transformers and other critical equipment to the power grid within five years, at the outside.

Of course, this includes heavy cannibalization of the old equipment, and incredible amount of coordination, but it is possible.......and it looks as if this is being done deliberately.

There's a few clusters of manufacturing facilities, looks like remnants of depression era plants, that look to be perfect for such bootstrapping. And the Quebec facility is placed in the right area to be important to the restoration of the grid.